You May Have Missed This - Ben De La Cour - Sweet Anhedonia

I am a fan of what some call Gothic Americana.  Dark Country, sometimes with an underying sense of humour, but that is not some essential. 

It has always been in country music with its murder ballads and songs like Long Dark Veil and Leon Payne's magnificent Psycho (check out Elvis Costello's version. The modern take may have started with artists like Nick Cave exploring Johnny Cash's dark side and its trail runs through Nick Cave, The Handsome Family, 16 Horsepower, Willard Grant Conspiracy and probably my favourite Jim White.  

Sweet Anhedonia by Ben De La Cour was released in 2023 and was one of my favourites of that year. Jim White produced it and his influence is evidenced in both the sound and the songs themselves.  Anhedonia is a mental health issue where sufferers fail to get enjoyment or pleasure from life's experiences.  

Sweet Anhedonia

I should have known you'd be back

With your sickle and shawl

Your dreams dressed in black

How does it feel

To feel nothing at all?

Nothing at all

If that is not dark enough for you you can also try Appalachian Book of the Dead

There's a sinkhole fallen from the cold grey sky

Where they scraped that trooper off the highway side

Two runaway convicts, kids on dope they said

Cops flooded out the holler dragged the river still

They never found them boys and I doubt they will

Just another lonesome chapter

In the Appalachian Book of the Dead

Where you gonna go when you can't go home

Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?

Blood calls to blood bone cleaves to bone

Where you gonna go when you can't go home?

Winter came early the cold wind blew

And my grandma painted her porch haint blue

That night in Ammit County when the corn moon turned blood red

But something cold is stirring at the bottom of the creek

Where that little boy drowned back in '63

And the ink is running over

In the Appalachian Book of the Dead

Buckshot rattling in a garbage pail

A sliver of truth dug into every tale

A weeping angel painted on rusted shed

The dead hate the living but what do they know?

Just little white crosses on a county road

But they're writing out the ledger

In the Appalachian Book of the Dead

It is not all doom and gloom though, the reflective I've Got Everything I've Ever Wanted that seems to show that Ben has got a hold of his Anhedonia or it as least in remission. 

I took life by the hand and I gave it some kind of a whirl

Just another left foot walking through a right shoe world.........

......I used to watch through the windshield

At the coming of the night

Now I'm sitting in the kitchen

Laughing at the morning light

Song of the Day 65 : Our Lips are Sealed : Fun Boy 3

Our Lips are Sealed was originally a hit for The Go Gos but it is the version by Terry Hall and Fun Boy Three that is what I know best and enjoy the most.

When The Specials broke up the smart money was on Jerry Dammers having the most successful afterlife.  But the smart money is not always right and Hall's contribution to The Specials was probably under-estimated.  Evidence of this is that post Specials he probably had the most successful career.  First with Fun Boy Three, then The Colourfield and, after a few collaborations as a solo artist. 

Always interesting and now sadly missed. 

Favourites - Gomez - In Our Gun and How We Operate

Gomez is a five member band from both Southport and the English resort town Weston-super-Mare just across the Bristol Channel from Cardiff.  They play a mix of styles and writing and singing and swapping instrument leads from time to time - reminiscent of The Band's approach.  

I have been a fan since their Mercury Prize winning debut Bring it On and until she saw them Jan thought some of their music just noise.  

While I was in Dublin last year I came across an anniversary edition of their 2006 album How We Operate.  Jan and I (and Chris) saw the tour that supported this album.  It was fun and also what got Jan across the line in terns of enjoying Gomez's varied sound,.  Probably because it is their popiest album and while some fans were pleased others were put off by the overt stab at the charts. 

While I enjoy the pop of Girlshapedlovedrug I am more drawn to the dreamy Charlie Patton Songs  or the more representative Hamona Beach. 

I bought my first (CD) copy of In Our Gun in 2001 in Hong Kong when I heard it playing in the HMV
store.  But a few years ago I picked up this vinyl copy in Melbourne.   

A lovely pressing that helped me appreciate it all over again.  From the opening track - Shot Shot (the track that was playing in the store, through the title track and onto the close out Ballad of Nice and Easy you really get a good taste of what Gomez is all about.  

I have bought a couple of CDs since How We Operate but they never seemed to capture that magic again. We also saw Ben Ottewell solo at the San Francisco in what was a fun show.  They still play and record and who knows there may be another great album yet.  

Song of the Day : Almost Blue - Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello twice recorded songs with the same title as an album but then did not include the song on that album.  Almost Blue appears on the album Imperial Bedroom and is a great example as to why Costello is such a revered songwriter

Chet Baker plays trumpet on the album and then recorded his own version as well for the soundtrack album - Let's Get Lost

Almost blue

Almost doing things we used to do

There's a girl here and she's almost you, almost

All the things that your eyes once promised

I see in hers too

Now your eyes are red from crying

Almost blue

Flirting with this disaster became me

It named me as the fool who only aimed to be

Almost blue

It's almost touching it will almost do

There is part of me that's always true...always

Not all good things come to an end now it is only a chosen few

I've seen such an unhappy couple

Almost me

Almost you

Almost blue

You may have missed this - James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds

Way back in 2014 I wrote a blog about how much I liked James McMurtry's debut album Too Long in the Wasteland.   

More than 30 years after releasing that fine album in 2021 I think he released his finest work to date with The Horses and the Hounds.  While I enjoyed it immedirately it has steadily grown on me, the depth of the songwriting becoming clearer with every play.  

It was the opening song Canola Fields that drew me into repeated listening.  The best song I have heard about rekindling youthful love.  You can always expect some evocative phrases and this was the one that got me 

In a way back corner of a cross-town bus

We were hiding out under my hat

Cashing in on a thirty-year crush

You can't be young and do that

One song later, after the romanticsm of that track there is the pointed critique of Operation Never Mind how the US engages in war (or operations) these days.  With the profiteering and eliticsm of the KBR Man versus the poor country boy doing the fighting.

The country boys will do the fighting

Now that fighting's all a country boy can do

But all the time being very aware to avoid the public getting too het up about it. 

We got a handle on it this time

No one's gonna tell us we were wrong

We won't let the cameras near the fighting

That way we won't have another Vietnam

No one knows, 'cause no one sees

No one cares, 'cause no one knows

No one knows, 'cause no one sees it on TV

Later we have the funkiness of Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call built around relationship issues and how losing your glasses can make a whole day turn to shit.  

She's camped in the shower and she won't come out

And I don't have a clue what that's about

I'll just have to wait and see

Can't get online to check the bank

Twitter's on fire, my stocks all tanked

But what's really getting to me is

I keep losing my glasses

After more trials and tribulations the day ends as it started 

My daddy told me, if you got any sense

Better feed the woman, many years hence

I know what he meant and I got me a plan

But I can't read the menu 'cause, damn it

I keep losing my glasses (glasses)

Those are some of my highlights but as I am playing the record now - I could have picked three of four others 

Favourites - North Mississippi Allstars - Shake Hands wwith Shorty

I keep a list of favourite CDs I would like to have on vinyl.  These are genrerally ones that were released in the 90's and early 00s that have never beeen on vinyl.  I made the lisr some years ago now and there were about 70  on it originally.  Wuth the vinyl revival some have now seen the light of day and there are now ONLY 50 to go.  I am resigned that some by some pretty obsure artists or artists that have now left us may never see the light of day. 

So I was really pleased when Shake Hands with Shorty was released on vinyl for the first time on Record Store Day last year.  I first heard the CD when I was browsing in Radar Records in Christchurch around 2000 and it was playing in store.  

The band is built around brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson who are the sons of Jim Dickinson, the almost legendary member of the Dixie Flyers who backed many soul artists in the 60s, played piano on Wild Horses and produced The Replacements.  

Shake Hands with Shorty is their debut albium and is steeped in the hill country blues style of Mississippi Fred McDowell,  Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside.  It starts with the MCDowell classic Shake 'em on Down, includes Burnside's Going Down South and ends with Kimbrough's All Night Long. 

I already had McDowell's I Do Not Play No Rock'n'Roll and knew him through songs like Good Morning Little School Girl and You Gotta Move (check the Stones' version on Sticky Fingers) but this was my introduction to the other two.  This is a different style of blues, driving repetitive and a link to some more modern sounds.  

I have continued to track the Dickinson boys both with the North Mississippi Allstars (their Up and Rolling album was my favourite of 2019) and as session musicians where they have supported favouries like John Hiatt and Anders Osborne. 

Song of the Day : My Old Friend The Blues - Steve Earle

Confession time.  The first version of My Old Friend The Blues was by The Proclaimers on their excellent Sunshine on Leith album.  I was aware of the buzz around Steve Earle's Guitar Town album but it was not enough for me to buy the album at the time.   However it is Steve Earle's Version that I now play the most. However I did play The Proclaimers recently and that too is bloody good.  

Steve Earle has written some other great songs that are equal to this but what a good (late) start to a career.

Simple

Elegant

Complete

My Old Friend The Blues

Just when every ray of hope was gone 

I should have known that you would come along 

I can't believe I ever doubted you 

My old friend the blues 

Another lonely night, a nameless town 

If sleep don't take me first, you'll come around 

'Cause I know I can always count on you 

My old friend the blues 

Lovers leave and friends will let you down 

But you're the only sure thing that I've found 

No matter what I do I'll never lose 

My old friend the blues 

Just let me hide my weary heart in you 

My old friend the blues